Week Two

This time last week I was having to put down my dear cat of nearly 14 years. Today I am fully aware of that fact, even as life goes on. I am still questioning if I did the right thing, what I could have done differently to notice she was sick (why can’t pets tell us when they aren’t feeling well?!), what might have been. Mostly I know that I did do the right thing, that I am not perfect, and that I did my best, and that things might have turned out the same, because that’s just how things go. And sometimes I really miss the fatness and get sad, and other times I don’t think about her, or I think about her and feel happy, or I feel a little guilty that I am continuing on with my life and she’s not here anymore. So all really normal stuff.

I thought I’d sit down and try to write a blog post that wasn’t about the pets. I will tell you, the last few months have been difficult. There have been mornings where I would cry in the morning because dealing with all the pets was so stressful and the opposite of what I wanted to do first thing in the morning. Maybe, in retrospect, one of the reasons Fatness was so hard to deal with as well was because she wasn’t feeling well. I don’t know. I would get up, and have three animals yelling at me, following me around, getting underfoot, barking, meowing, hissing at each other, and I’d have to feed them, give them medicine, replace their water and puppy pads that Chloe had soaked and sometimes crinkled up so that meant cleaning up urine. And the thing is, all of that is still happening, minus the hissing, and minus one animal, but it does make it a little more manageable. Or it’s just different. I don’t know. Maybe after you’ve spent days crying over a sick pet, you can’t immediately return to crying over stress from hungry animals.

So as you can see, it’s hard to write a post not about the pets. Mostly because lately they have taken up such a huge portion of my time. I’ve gotten back into regular teaching which has been nice, and had two rehearsals for Winter Opera St Louis yesterday (my back and shoulders are SO sore and tired!), and that was fun. We have a wonderful Italian conductor…well he is from Italy, but went to school in France and currently lives in Utah, so really he’s from all different places. I liked him from the first rehearsal when he got a little broken up talking about how he had had five dogs, and now two, and they are in Italy.

Oh, and the WEATHER. It’s been FREEZING cold. It makes running outside less than appealing, and it makes getting out of bed less than appealing! I have bailed on my race series over the winter, due to a variety of factors mainly that my cat was sick and I just can’t deal with everything I’d planned. But Louie and I are signed up to run the Castlewood Cup at the end of February, and I’m starting training for the Go St Louis Half Marathon this week! That means that today I need to bundle up and go for a run. It’s sunny, which makes it especially disheartening when it’s really cold (it’s currently 12 degrees, with a high of 18 predicted). I know that we need the cold weather for our climate, and that we were “lucky” (depending on how global warming makes you feel) to have a mild winter until now, but, I still get to complain, don’t I?

Oh, and for local to semi-local readers, my quartet, the Perseid Quartet, is playing a concert on January 31 in Edwardsville, Illinois. We are performing the Smetana Quartet and Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 59, #1. We’d love to see you there!